m a n i l a g i r l

“I Want” was the title of my twenty year-old friend Bianca’s most recent post on her Multiply web log. She wrote so openly and earnestly about the things that she wanted:

“I want to buy a sewing machine, learn how to sew, and sew my own dress. I will be a semi-prosumer (because I will not have enough time to produce my textiles), and I don't need to wake up everyday fantasizing over a dress I wish I could wear.

And I want to live in Latin America or Africa in the next five years. I want to thoroughly familiarize myself with the heat, and hunger.

And my tiny house in Batangas. I want to own a tiny house in Batangas before I turn thirty. I want to drive my yellow hummer and wear high heels. I want to have my own desk, where I could write. I can write and write and write.

I will organize poetry readings, open mics, theater productions and fashion shows. I will have occasional affairs with good men. Sometimes, I will just be alone. But I will cherish solitude because I need it too.

I want to be able to still call my friends in the middle of the night, when I don't feel good.

I will have occasional script readings, and have the courage to produce the 3-act play I wrote two years ago (Gulugod-Kalayaan). I want to learn to play the piano. I want to be abstract. Or maybe psychedelic. Then, I want to be photographed naked. Or sculpted naked. Or just be watched naked. By my Man.

And sleep. I want to sleep.”

Bianca’s voice was so original, so raw, so honest, so…“crazy” it made me think about the things I really wanted again. I had written my own crazy dreams on a small post-it note but had forgotten all about it in the steady turnover of schoolwork, personal projects, get-togethers with friends and down time with the family. I just had to thank Bianca for helping me get in touch with my own craziness again and reminding me to give it the space it deserves in my life.

At twenty-eight, I’ve come to accept the fact that I DO want many things: I want to write essays on travel, art and people I admire, dance jazz and salsa, do my yoga every day, be involved in cultural heritage preservation, travel to and live in Batanes or Sagada, have satisfying here-there-and-everywhere conversations with my closest friends every night in our favorite cafes, love and be loved by a man who appreciates my depths but can also crack the silliest jokes to give me a respite from these once in a while, make sure my mom stays away from too many cakes, dad from too many tantrums and my sisters from situations that drain their joy away. I want all of these but also UNDERSTAND I may not be able to have all of them: I have only one body with a certain amount of energy, eighteen hours max when I’m awake and a leather wallet that never seems to have enough pesos to do what I need to accomplish in a day. So every once in a while (and especially whenever I realize I’ve “overbooked” again), I ask myself: Why do you want THIS, really? Can you live without this or is it as essential as breathing to you? What do you really WANT to do anyway? Picking and choosing, discarding and keeping have always been difficult facts of life for beings with infinite possibilities and finite realities.

In writing, it’s pretty much the same. In talking about his life as a writer, Carlos Fuentes ("Latin American Writers at Work" in The Paris Review) put it succinctly with these words:

“At fifty I find there is a long line of characters and shapes demanding words just outside my window. I wish I could capture all of them, but I won’t have enough time. The process of selection is terrifying because in the selecting you necessarily kill something.”

Ultimately, it is his meditation on Death as the “great angel of writing” which I will keep with me because what “I Want” really is to “start writing seriously”, to stop wasting precious time, to cut through the excuses and the laziness and the 1,001 distractions:

“When your life is half over, I think you have to see the face of death in order to start writing seriously. There are people who see the end quickly, like Rimbaud. When you start seeing it, you feel you have to rescue these things. Death is the great Maecenas, Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live anymore.”

            Now, excuse me, but did you see where I put my pen and paper?